


Thicker Than Water

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [14]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Episode: s08e12 As Time Goes By, Family Reunions, Gen, Name Changes, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 06:43:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4211943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barney Barton just got out of prison and is approached by someone who knows too much about the brother he abandoned half a lifetime ago.</p>
<p>Henry Winchester just traveled 55 years to learn his son is dead and his grandsons are uneducated apes.</p>
<p>The daughter of the devil didn't have to change to her name to know families are messy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Barney's one of those funny characters that can fall just about anywhere on the good/evil spectrum in fandom. Especially since MCU hasn't mentioned him at all. And where canon leaves holes, fanfic authors spin whole cloth. 
> 
> (R&S has been killing canon slowly.)

"Charles Barton? Or do you prefer Barney?"

 Barney was a name from a different era. Like Bertha, or Percy – Harry Potter notwithstanding – no one was called Barney these days. Still, his nickname was part of him, like his forty-five years of life or his twenty-two years in prison. He had been Barney for so long that Charles Barton felt like a different person. Charles Barton was a kid, with a younger brother and shit parents. Barney Barton was a middle-aged, newly ex-con with nobody.

 Except a vaguely intimidating woman in a neat, dark grey pantsuit, with perfectly styled black hair who seemed immune to the frigidity of the winter and met him outside the Illinois State Penitentiary that had been his home for the better part of the last two decades.

 Seeing how he'd never met her before in his life, her appearance right as he was released from prison could be no coincidence. He had just got out, he had no intention of doing anything to go back in. He  _wanted_  a life, even a crappy one, as long as it wasn't confined to four white-washed, guarded walls.

 "Barney is fine. What do you want?" Sure he had some skills, but nothing spectacular, nothing worth being met outside a prison for as if he might be lost otherwise. Which meant shady business, which meant he was going to have to find a polite way to tell her to fuck off if he didn't want the rest of his life to be shittier than absolutely necessary.

 "I would like to speak with you about a personal matter," the woman said smoothly.

 Uh huh. Right. They sent a woman would looked like she had money to a guy barely two steps out of jail to talk about a personal matter. Bullshit. None of his "personal matters" were worth talking about to a stranger. Barney told her so.

 "My name is Dawn Morrow. I work with Phil Coulson."

 "Don't know him either."

 "Really? I believe he attended your parole hearing."

 Ah. The unassuming guy in the suit who hadn't said anything, just sat there taking notes. Barney had wondered about him, wondered if the guy was there to deny him parole for some reason. He certainly hadn't made parole that time. Well, he was out now, suit or no.

 "Care to take a ride?" she offered innocuously, gesturing toward a waiting black SUV with dark tinted windows.

 "What would you do if I said no?" Barney countered.

 Morrow – and if there wasn't some title that went before that then he didn't know nothing – tilted her head lightly to her right. "I would ask when you last heard from your brother."

 Barney stiffened and got in the car. The bag of all of his worldly possessions went at his feet as Morrow got in beside him. The driver pulled away without any need for instructions.

 Clearly this was all planned. Just as clearly, Barney was probably going to miss his scheduled check-in at the halfway house. It figured.

 The car drove away from the prison and out into the countryside. Not anywhere near the prison. It wasn't a short ride. Nor was it particularly comfortable. In fact, it was easily in the running for the most uncomfortable car ride of Barney's life. Morrow wasn't saying a damn thing, just lounging seemingly carelessly in her seat, studying him. He studied her in return, careful not to meet her eyes. When that started to creep him out, he looked out the window, watching horse pastures turn into quaint towns and back again.

 The car turned down a curvy drive and shut off in front of what looked like a genuine farmhouse. There was even an honest-to-God barn. The driver, a lean black man with all the trappings of ex-military, showed him and Morrow to the door of the house. Morrow had the key. He distracted himself from morbid wonderings of how many people died in the barn and how by trying to guess why the as yet unnamed driver was  _ex-_ military so young. He looked to be late twenties, early thirties at most, and in excellent health.

 Barney was willing to admit, if only to himself, that the parade of empty rooms – entry hall (for real?), kitchen, living room – surprised him. He had expected someone to be there to meet him, to dangle whatever offer they thought was so unrefusable in front of him. But no. It actually made more sense if he had to wait.  _See? We are more important, more powerful than you. You are nothing. But we are generous. Join us and you can be Something too_.

 He wasn't unfamiliar with the sentiment. Trickshot and the Swordsman had similar attitudes; for a time he had shared it.

 "Make yourself comfortable," Morrow said, waving a hand at the sofa and armchairs. "Can I get you anything? Soda? Beer, maybe? Are you hungry? This place is stocked with all the goodies."

 "Why not?" Barney replied, not letting himself be thrown off by her welcoming facade.

 "Wonderful! Jake, mind seeing what you can make from whatever you find in the kitchen?"

 The bodyguard/ former soldier apparently didn't mind – or took the suggestion as an order – because he left without a word.

 That left Barney alone in the room with the well-paid, high-level goon who wanted to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. Even if he was going to damn well  _try_  to refuse. And didn't understand why he was being made an offer in the first place.

 Well, Clint. His brother was involved in this mess somehow.

 "Twenty-four years," Barney said, taking a seat on the couch.

 He half expected her to ask what he was talking about, but Morrow was too well-trained – or well-informed – to do so.

 "Three months, a week, and four days," she added, shrugging out of her suit jacket and tossing it over the back of one of the armchairs.

 Twenty-two years in prison trained flinching out of him. Well-informed. Definitely. And yes, he did know those figures himself.

 Morrow removed a portfolio from the bookcase and gracefully seated herself in the jacket-draped chair. Opening the folder, she passed him a picture.

 It was a perfectly ordinary photograph. The subject didn't appear to be aware of the camera, walking down the street, hands tucked into his jacket pockets.

 A second picture joined the first. Same subject, but faintly out of focus, as if both camera and subject were in motion, or maybe far away. This time he was wearing a sleeveless shirt with a quiver strapped to his back and unidentifiable debris in the background.

 "I doubt it could have escaped your notice that one of the heroes of New York carried a bow and was called 'Hawkeye.'"

 So that was the angle she was going for.

 "I noticed. Didn't think much about it. My brother was a little shit I left for dead a lifetime ago."

 "He’s something of a ninja." She said it with a smirk, like it was some kind of inside joke.

 Prison left him plenty of time to think. So, yeah, he noticed when some faceless Hawkeye showed up on the news with a billionaire and a bunch of aliens.

 It was the faceless part that got him. A city full of tourists with cameras and instant internet access and not a single clear shot of Hawkeye. (Or Black Widow or Orion.) Had to be a conspiracy of some kind. And now he was being offered a personalized invitation.

 Had Clint become a real-life superhero? He certainly couldn't discount the possibility. It was like the circus, but on a much larger scale. Clint loved the circus, loved the crowds, especially loved showing off how good he was with a bow in his hands.

 So when a bow-wielding mystery man appeared all over television with the moniker "Hawkeye," yes, Barney thought it was Clint. From the first minute the coverage from New York hit the prison rumor mill.

 Part of him was still grossly jealous of his little brother. Always the one getting the best, hogging the attention, ignoring his big brother. Clint was always the star of the show. And now he was a national hero while Barney rotted in prison? Yeah, he was jealous. Always had been. Clint always seemed to land on his feet.

 That was part of the reason he hadn't let himself feel (too) guilty for abandoning him. (Beaten and broken and bloody and abandoned and  _brother._ )

 Prison gave a man too much time alone with his thoughts.

 However bad he was at the job, he was still an older brother. And having photographic confirmation that Clint was okay, was doing alright for himself, soothed an ache he believed he had cut out of his life years – decades – ago. Because the man in those pictures was none other Clinton Francis Barton, a man (boy) Barney had last seen twenty four years ago bleeding into the dirt.

 He failed at being a big brother, what could he say? He failed at being a good person, too. Hence twenty two years in prison.

 She handed him a file. He opened it with hesitant anticipation. It contained the story of Clint's life. He skipped over the parts about the drunk, abusive father and the car accident that took both parents, ditching the orphanage to join the circus (they were kids; it sounded like a good idea), and the bad mentor fiasco that eventually followed. His memory (and conscience and nightmares) told him more about those things than this file ever could. 

 It was Clint’s life post-Barney he was interested in. The filed was bare and short on details, but contained enough to put the picture together. In the hospital with a laundry list of injuries and no insurance. Desperate enough to accept an offer to become "private security." Finding out that meant mercenary to unsavory characters but unable to do a thing about it. Said unsavory characters attracting the attention of SHIELD. Getting caught by SHIELD in the eventual sweep. Accepting their offer. Almost getting dropped for repeated discipline problems before joining something called Strike Team Delta. Becoming a nationally recognized icon.

 Barney spent a long time staring at the file.

 "I won't do it."

 "I'm sorry? Do what?" Morrow asked in innocent confusion.

 "Fuck you," Barney spat. Like she didn't know what he was talking about. "I'm a shitty person, sure. A shittier brother, definitely. But like hell is my first act outta prison gonna be to screw over my brother a second time."

 Whatever response she might have had was interrupted by a knock on the doorjamb. A faintly smug expression on her face, Morrow called, “Hey, Jake.”

 The returning muscle took that as an all clear sign and walked in balancing three plates with sandwiches and three beer bottles.

 “I hope you like turkey,” the ex-soldier said, setting one of each on the coffee table in front of Barney, who hastily replaced and closed the file.

 Morrow waved away the attempt as she was handed a sandwich of her own. “It’s fine. Nothing we don’t have duplicates of.”

 The soldier – hadn’t she just called him Jake? – dropped into an armchair. “What’d I miss?” he asked, taking a bite of his sandwich.

 Morrow grinned. “I’ve got to hand it to Phil. I wasn’t convinced, but he was right. Admittedly, he usually is, but, regardless, we’ve got ourselves a winner.”

 Jake looked Barney over as he swallowed his mouthful. “You sure?”

 “Pretty darn.”

 “Excellent! Congrats, buddy.”

 “What?” Barney was confused.

 Morrow smiled like a cat who got a canary – or six. All she needed was a few feathers. “We protect our own. The last person who tried to fuck with Clint got sent off with a guy who uses people’s vices against them.”

 “What?” he repeated.

 “An asshole who’s also a slightly unethical animal tester gets eaten by an alligator in the sewer. Obnoxious frat boy who hazes pledges get probed by aliens. That sort of thing. Granted, he’s not as homicidal as he used to be.

 Barney stared at her.  _Homicidal?_

 "That's not entirely accurate," Jake pointed out mildly.

 “He doesn’t kill as often as he used to,” Morrow insisted. “Probably because he’s busy with that whole Loki-rehabilitation thing.”

 “Your uncle doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do,” Jake sort-of countered. “But that’s not the part I was arguing with. Loki wasn’t the last person to try to hurt Clint.”

 “Hmm? Oh.” It was somewhat disconcerting to see her roll her eyes. It tarnished the impeccable professional image she had going. “Right, Ross. Yeah, well, he’s an asshole. But Clint wasn’t his first target. He would have _settled_ for Clint, but his irrational vendetta has always been for Bruce.”

 It was Jake’s turn to smirk. “Tony made him look like an idiot. Again.”

 “It wasn’t like Betty objected to being faux-kidnapped. And Nat dangled Goodwell off the edge of the ‘Carrier, so it all worked out.”

 “Goodwell was the one who leaked the mind-puppet thing to the Army?”

 “I hope so,” Morrow admitted. “Otherwise I don’t know why Nat threatened to kill him.”

 “What the _fuck?!”_

  The two turned toward him, almost as though they were surprised he was still there.

 Jake raised as eyebrow at Morrow. “You haven’t explained a thing have you?”

 “You weren’t gone very long,” she countered.

 Jake continued to stare at her.

 Finally, she had the grace to look abashed. “There was a reason I left off proper introductions until he decided. But he did, and I never got back around to it.”

 "Decided what?" Barney demanded. "That I wasn't going to help you screw over my brother?"

 “Yes,” Morrow replied promptly. “But we don’t want him screwed over. This here is Agent Jake Talley of SHIELD and I’m Agent Dawn Morrow. We work with your brother, and you can understand why we didn't want to mention that until you made your choice."

  _That_  threw him for a loop. "SHIELD. You mean you –”

 "Know Clint? Yeah, he's a friend and part of the reason I'm part of SHIELD at all."

 "But you –“

 “Acted like I had super-villain somewhere on my resume?” she supplied with a grin. “I figured I’d get a more honest reaction than if we tried a version of the shovel talk. Also, it was kinda fun,” she admitted. “My workload increased quite a bit with Orion visiting Thor’s home. I don’t think I ever really appreciated just how much work Bela does until I got some of it back.”

 “So all this?”

 "You're Clint's brother. That makes you a potential liability for an agent who has enough trouble as it is. Phil's had an eye on you since before he became Clint's handler. He wanted to vet you personally, but has some issues of his own to deal with currently. 'This' as you say, was to determine whether you were a problem or a potential asset. And I'm generally the one handling questionable assets, more so now that I’ve inherited some of Orion’s work load."

 Barney couldn't help but stare. He had been  _vetted_  by his brother's . . . friends? Or just co-workers? Did it matter? But . . . he passed?

 "Is Clint okay?"

 She shrugged. "There was some trouble after New York, but that's mostly cleared up by now." 

 "What happened to him in New York?"

 "Nothing  _in_  New York, but leading up to the battle? He was compromised; it wasn't pretty. Without the team, they would have turned him into a pariah. I was rather busy at the time, so I only caught the edge of it, but Orion’s possessive of her friends and Stark doesn't suffer idiots gladly."

 "So he's okay now?"

 "Yeah. He is," Morrow confirmed.

 Barney let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "What happens n –”

 Her phone rang. She tensed and checked the number. "I have to take this. Jake can answer your questions for a bit." Heading for the next room, she answered the call. "What's up, Sam?" Any response there might have been was too low to carry as she moved out of earshot.

 Jake put down the remainder of his sandwich. "It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"

 "Yes," he agreed. "It happen to you?"

 “I was kidnapped. By a guy with some, uh, history with Orion. I got lucky, though – Kyria showed up in time to stop him.”

 “Kyria?”

 Jake grimaced. “Kyria Lux, better known as Orion. Don’t spread that name around, okay? I knew her before she became an alien superhero. She never liked the limelight, went out of her way to minimize her alien-ness. Then – New York happened. I think she was relieved to escape to Asgard, even if she has alien politics to deal with now.”

 Barney had absolutely no idea what to say to that. Casually mentioning aliens in conversation was not something he had much (any) experience with.

 Jake seemed to realize that because he gave a sheepish smile. “Anyway. I got rescued by Kyria and, well, your brother, but my world got flipped upside-down and SHIELD swiped me from the Army. Dawn _was_ primarily a doctor, but she ended up as Kyria’s doc, and it kinda spiraled with that thing with Phil, and she’s kinda Kyria’s successor now. In more ways than one, although it may just be that the job of Director’s Troubleshooter is cursed with chaotic followings.”

 "Ah. So, all this isn't anything unusual?"

 "For Dawn? Nah, this is pretty much par for the course, although that may be because I’m used to Kyria. The Director kinda gives her a free hand."

 That confused him for a moment because Barney wasn’t entirely sure which “her” he was referring to, but then he decided Jake probably meant both, if Morrow was now doing what Orion had done prior to going to an _alien planet_. He wasn’t sure if the details made Clint’s new life more or less incredible.

 "To do  _what_  exactly? What does SHIELD expect from me?"

 Jake shrugged. "Mostly that you don't do anymore shady shit. By helping you, they protect Clint, even though he doesn't know Phil had you under observation. The house's yours whether or not he wants to talk to you after he finds out."

 "Wait, the house? You're . . . giving me the house?" He may have been out of the loop for the last twenty years, but this was a  _nice_  house. Especially the part where it was a _farm_ house and came with a not inconsiderable amount of property attached.

 "Yeah," the former soldier said with another shrug. "Clint's one of ours. And by ‘ours’ I sorta mean Kyria’s – when she decides she likes you, she does incredible things, man. Another one of hers decided to become a dairy farmer so she started buying up farms. Occasionally in weird places, but they’re all designated safe houses, so I suppose it makes sense, even if Lenore and her family aren’t actually moving all over the place. But as long as you don’t renege on not screwing Clint over, you can stay. Kyria's good about stuff like that. She's easily the best person I ever took orders from, even if I end up dealing with weird situations."

 "Weird?"

 Jake snorted and shook his head. "There's this writer. Kyria and your brother ran into him a few years back. He writes science fiction. It was a pretty obscure series until New York – afterwards sales picked up because Orion and Hawkeye were characters. Not exactly accurate, but the characterizations are pretty on point."

 "Clint is a character in science fiction?" Barney repeated in disbelief.

 Jake laughed. "Yeah, well, technically the character is  _based_  on Clint, and SHIELD was  _pissed_  because science fiction or not, some things were a little too accurate for comfort."

 Okay, so Barney could admit his curiosity was piqued. His brother was a fictional character. "What series is this?"

 " _Supernatural_ , by Carver Edlund. Hawkeye and Orion don't appear until  _All Hell Breaks Loose_. I'm in that book."

 "You too? Really?" So SHIELD had superheroes and aliens and not-so-fictional characters and some people who were all of the above. Clearly Clint joined the circus too young to ever be normal again. He didn’t seem to be doing too badly for himself despite all that, though.

 "Like I said, not exactly accurate,” Jake said with a shrug that was half grimace, “but too close for comfort. The author knew enough about the op to worry people, even if the security breach wasn't much of a threat. I mean, it's sci-fi. You read a book about monsters and demons and government agents and your first thought isn't 'this must be about a real – if metaphorical – situation,' you know?"

 He _didn’t_ know, but he could agree it made sense. "Worth reading?"

 "It's decent. I know I would recommend it, at least the later stuff. Some of the earlier books weren't impressive,” Jake admitted. “I’m biased, but in my opinion, it only really gets good when Kyria shows up.  Part of it is because I like seeing what he does to Kyria's character. You’ll probably meet her at some point – she’s real protective of Clint. And then I get a bit freaked at times when he accidentally gets something right. Like when he wrote her on Asgard months before she actually went. It's –”

 "RUN! Get out!"

 Jake jumped to his feet, drawing a gun Barney hadn't even known he carried.

 Dawn's urgent exclamations were audible across the house. "No, don't let him – don't you  _dare_  put me on hold –  _idiots!_  If you get yourselves killed, so help me – Sam! He did  _what?_  Your brother is an  _idiot!_  Of course it didn't work! I told you to get out of there! Yes, good, drive. I'll meet you whenever you stop."

 The lights flickered ominously and Morrow stalked back into the living room, looking every bit as dangerous as Barney had thought her. "I now understand why the expletive was ' _Gryffindor_  idiots.'" She shook her head angrily. "Sorry to cut the Q&A short, but if I don't go –  _now_  – they're going to get themselves killed and I didn't put so much effort into protecting them for shit like this to happen." She swore in a language he didn't recognize.

With a hurried apology, Barney was handed an information packet and a card and told to call if he had any questions. Dawn then quickly herded Jake out to the driveway, although the former soldier grabbed their sandwiches on the way out.

 "I need you to drop me at the house in Winchester.”

 “I still can’t believe you bought property in a town called _Winchester_.”

 “I got a good price.”

 “What’d they do that requires all speed?”

 “I don’t think it was anything they did this time. Or at least mostly. I mean, they have this bad habit of picking fights with things they don’t know _how_ to fight, but it’s mostly a family thing.”

 “So – bad.”

 “When isn’t it?”

 Two car doors slammed, cutting off the flow of conversation. Barney heard the gravel fly as the agents spun around and drove away insanely fast.

 He was officially confused.

 He also had a farm, food, and a chance to pick up the broken pieces of his life, so he counted it as an acceptable deal.

 Barney picked up his sandwich and sat back down to look over what information they left him with.

 

***


	2. Chapter 2

"It's a blood sigil," their apparently-time-traveling grandfather explained. "Blood leads to blood. Or their next of kin."

 "But Abaddon came through it also, right?" Sam pointed out, making sure he had the rather crazy story straight. It was one of the craziest things he'd ever heard, but probably not  _the_  craziest. Aliens invaded New York, after all.  "So you can create this blood sigil again?" So they could get rid of the unkillable demon before she killed them?

 "My blood, an angel feather, tears of a dragon, a pinch of the sands of time," Henry Winchester listed off to Sam's general awe. Where did a person  _get_  that stuff? "I – I would need those and . . . at least a week for my soul to recharge, but, yes, it's possible."

 "You tapped the power of your soul to get here?" Sam repeated. "How do you do that?"

 Henry gave him a confused look. "You should know this. What level are you two?"

 Dean gave him a blank look right back. "What level?"

 "Level of knowledge," Henry explained with an air of one pointing out the obvious. "You're Men of Letters, correct?"

 Sam looked at his brother, who looked right back. Yeah, that's what he thought. No idea what he was talking about. Shouldn't Kyria be here by now? Actually, no, “Kyria” was on Asgard; she was going by “Dawn” these days. Hunters faked names as easily as breathing, but as far as he knew, only Bela actually _kept_ the alias. Sort of. “Bela” was part of the alias. And Bela wasn’t a real hunter. Although she _was_ a ninja. But Kyria was famous and the ninjas were secret, so Kyria gave herself a whole new identity. Same person, new name.

 And to think, most hunters hadn’t needed fake names since Kyria got involved.

 Ironic. 

"I'm a little rusty on my boy bands," Dean began, not bothering to conceal either his skepticism or his sarcasm. Dean had nothing but contempt for the man who – accidentally? mystically? – ran out on his son, their father. Not that Dad was the world's greatest father, himself, but he was still Dean's hero. "Men of what?"

 "Men of Letters," Dawn announced cheerfully, pulling up a chair and helping herself to Sam’s soda. She made a face at the drink. "Really?” She shook her head. “That's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Although I suppose now I know why they disappeared."

 "Disappeared?" Henry repeated, his eyes wide in horror.

 "It's a side project of Charlie's," Dawn explained, "trying to find what kept things in check before we came on the scene. Relatively speaking, Men of Letters was the most recent organization. But they were a small group and kept mainly to themselves. Officially they died in a fire in the late fifties. I'd guess it wasn't so much a fire as it was Abaddon."

 "You know her?" Dean asked.

 "Mostly by reputation. She's the last Knight of Hell. It's the sort of thing I pay attention to, you know? I rather hoped she had been killed, but my luck's never that good," she added with a grimace.

 "Knight of Hell? I know that doesn't sound good, but what does that even mean?" Dean asked.

 "Knights of Hell are hand-picked by Lucifer himself," Henry answered. "They are of the first-fallen, first-born demons."

 "Azazel was a lesser Knight," Dawn added, making the point with one of Henry’s fries.

 "Oh, great," Dean grumbled.

 "Is Abaddon better or worse than Lilith?" Sam wanted to know.

 Dawn frowned thoughtfully. "Abaddon's harder to kill, but she doesn't have the end goal either. It's a safe bet she's going to come after Henry, because he's the last of the Men of Letters and, technically, she just hit the rest of the group. We just need to get her before she joins forces with Lilith."

 Sam felt the blood drain from his face. "Is that likely?"

 She shrugged, swiping another fry, to Henry’s incredulous stare. "From what I recall, Abaddon's not one to play by the rules and doesn't do second fiddle well. If she gets bored, then  _maybe_  – but I don't think it is an immediate concern."

 Henry frowned at them. "If your father didn't teach you our ways, how is it you know these things?"

 Dean all but glared at the man. Sam interceded before they could start shouting in the diner. "Our father taught us how to be hunters."

 Henry laughed like he told a joke. "You're not." Nobody said anything. "Are you? Hunters? Well, hunters are . . . hunters are apes. You're supposed to – you're legacies."

 "The Men of Letters haven't existed since the night you stepped through that door," Dawn said gently.

 Sam blinked. That was one of his sweet potato fries. He hadn’t even seen her steal it.

 "What do you have against hunters anyway?" Dean demanded.

 "Aside from the unthinking, unwashed, shoot-first-and-don't-bother-to-ask-questions-later part, not much, really."

 Sam thought he'd been very good about the whole my-grandfather-just-traveled-fifty-five-years-through-a-closet-door thing. But while he hadn't wanted to be a hunter, he  _was_ one and his grandfather's opinions on the matter were grating. "You know what? Wait a second. We're also John's children."  _Your_  grandsons  _are hunters. Get used to it._

 "You're more than that, actually," Henry corrected. "My father and his father before him were both Men of Letters, as John and you two should have been. We're preceptors, beholders, chroniclers of all that which man does not understand. We share our findings with a few trusted hunters – the very elite. They do the rest."

 Dawn rolled her eyes, munching another of his fries.

 "So you're like Yodas to our Jedis," Dean said in understanding. Henry looked at him, not comprehending the reference. "Never mind. You'll get there."

 "You ever hear of the Campbell hunters?" Dawn asked.

 Henry turned his confused look on her. "Yes?"

 "Ha!" she exclaimed, gesturing somewhat wildly with a fry stolen from Dean. "I always wondered why they picked John. I mean, Mary, sure, daughter of hunters. But John? The marine thing seemed a bit too peripheral for an explanation.”

 Sam frowned, remembering something else she’d said about their parents. “That ties back to what you said about heaven getting Mom and Dad together, doesn’t it? The Winchesters and the Campbells – the brains and the brawn.”

  “You think Mom’s family knew about Dad’s connection to the Men of Letters?” Dean questioned.

 Dawn shrugged, stealing another fry from his plate. Dean glared. “Will you stop that?!”

 “Jake ate my sandwich,” she retorted, making off with another fry before turning back to Sam’s question. “It’s hard to say. Your maternal grandparents were dead before your parents married, and that was something like fifteen years after the Men of Letters disappeared, so probably not.”

 “John married a Campbell?” Henry said in disbelief.

 Dawn shot him a flat look. “As far as she knew, Mary married a civilian. All evidence indicates she got out of hunting. Not that that was ever possible given everything that was going on – tell me, did the Men of Letters follow angelic bloodlines?"

 " _Angelic_ bloodlines?" Henry repeated, eyebrows arcing towards his hairline. "Not that I know of, but Abaddon attacked us the night of my final initiation. All secrets were to be revealed then."

 "Huh."

 "Who are you?" Henry demanded. "What's your part in this? Are you a – a hunter?"

 "Not a hunter exactly," Dawn temporized. "I'm the person who spent a not inconsiderable amount of time removing the shoot-first-and-don't-bother-to-ask-questions-later mentality from hunters, so I find your anti-hunter prejudice offensive and out of date."

 "You can't really blame him for being out of date," Sam said, trying to be agreeable.

 Dawn shrugged. "The point is, we've managed to organize the hunter network into something a little less like an antisocial, vengeful gun club. Better warning, better research, better handling of witnesses and law enforcement. I also think it helps their mental health to know they aren't persecuted and alone. SHIELD is willing to pay them for their work  _and_ bail them out of trouble."

 "SHIELD?"

 "Um, right. It wasn't big in the fifties. Or any of the decades before New York, actually. It's the modern day SSR, complete with Captain America and a Stark. Same Captain America, different Stark. Cap spent seventy years as an ice cube before he was found and defrosted."

 Henry looked positively stunned. "You're telling me Captain America – the same Captain America who fought in World War II – is alive today?"

 "I helped him fight off aliens two years ago," Dawn said with a grin and another fry.

 "Who  _are_ you?" Henry asked again.

 "Very good question. Not an answer I feel comfortable giving here, even if we have just been discussing demons and time travel. Shall we take this elsewhere?"

 ***

 "Morningstar."

 "Yes."

 "Morningstar."

 "Repeating it again isn’t going to make it change."

 "Yes, but, you're the  _daughter of Lucifer_."

 “Yes, and I dropped an intake interview to rush over here and deal with your little time-traveling mess, so can you please at least pretend to move on to more relevant issues?”

 “Intake interview?” Sam put in before Henry and/or Dawn started a fight with the other.

 The woman in question broke off from glaring at the wayward time-traveler and took a seat on the motel room sofa with a sigh. “Yeah. Clint’s brother just got out of prison.”

 “Prison?” Dean repeated.

 She shrugged. “Long story. Phil’s been keeping an eye on him for years, but couldn’t sidetrack his whole team to meet with the guy, so he asked me. I barely got past making sure he wasn’t going to fuck over his brother again when you called.”

 Henry made an incredulous, semi-choking noise.

 Dawn flashed him a rather creepy smile with too many teeth showing. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, Henry.”

 Sam had to give his grandfather credit for both not recoiling from the smile and marshalling himself so quickly afterward. “How did Lucifer’s daughter come to be the first person my grandsons ask for help?”

 “Did you miss the part where she organized hunters?” Dean retorted.

 “And how do Lilith and Azazel fit in to all this?” Henry continued, hardly sparing a glance at his older grandson.

 Dawn sighed. “I’m beginning to see Jake’s point. You haven’t explained anything to him yet, have you?”

 “We were more concerned with the demon we couldn’t kill,” Dean pointed out testily.

 “Yes, but you called _me_. And explaining me requires explaining everything.”

 ***

 Nephilim were just the tip of the iceberg. Dawn did most of the storytelling, with Sam and Dean providing details, commentary, and expansions as they saw fit. Henry didn’t know what to think by the end of it. Angels and demons and destinies.

 “Where was I during all of this?”

 The awkward silence was very telling.

 Finally Sam said, “All we know is that Dad never saw you again.”

The words were a punch in the gut. Never saw him again, never learned of the Men of Letters, became a  _hunter._ “What did he think happened to me?”

 “He thought you ran out on him,” Dean threw out.

 Henry didn’t flinch, though he wanted to. That explained the attitude. But he was never supposed to abandon John. He had only intended the portal to be a temporary measure. “If I recreated the spell –“

  _“Don’t,”_ the Nephilim said, suddenly sitting upright and fixing her gaze on him. Henry pushed ahead.

 "I can go back and give John the life he deserves, not the one he was forced to live."

 Dean looked at him like he was crazy. "If you do that and you change the past, me and Sam might cease to exist!"

 "Wouldn't that be a paradox?" Sam asked.

 "I'm aware that time is a delicate mistress, but it would be for the best." _I could make things right with John. Be there for him, teach him the ways of the Letters, save him from the machinations of angels and demons_. It was an alluring vision of what might be.

 Dawn made a rude and distinctly un-ladylike noise. "You really think you'd be able to change anything? Heaven and Hell are pulling strings behind the scenes to get their way and have been for ages. I've got enough power to throw a wrench into the works and get away with it. Any one of them discovers _you_ are trying to fuck up their Grand Plan? They will squash you like a  _bug._  That's all you  _are_  to them."

 "So I should just  _accept_  that  _my son is dead?"_ He _couldn’t_ accept that. John was just a boy! He couldn’t find a hardened hunter in the son he remembered seeing just a few hours ago, a little boy scared of “Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.”

 "Accept the life you have now and stop trying to return to a life that won't happen. Heaven and Hell won't  _let_ it happen. This is what we have and it's all we'll ever have and it gives us an unusually high chance at keeping this messed up 'destiny' from ever happening. If you went back, one of the two sides would disappear you in a heartbeat. They pulled out all the stops for this.  _Cupids_ set John Winchester up with Mary Campbell."

 "And demons killed them both," he felt compelled to remind her, doing his best not to clench his teeth in frustration.

 "Same demon, actually. And that particular demon killed  _my husband_ , so don't act like you're the only person who ever lost anybody. We all have. It's part of what it means to be human," she finished darkly before pushing herself to her feet and exiting the motel room in a bundle of tightly coiled nerves.

 It was probably best that she left then, because the thought foremost on Henry’s mind was: _you’re not human_.

 That didn’t mean she hadn’t lost anybody though. And – her husband? Part of him felt guilty. The rest of him insisted she was wrong. But, even if she was, how would he be able to protect him son – and his grandsons – from both Heaven and Hell?

 A tense silence descended on the room.

 "Man, you really stepped in it," Dean said before the tension became thick enough to choke them.

 Sam could only agree with his brother. "She's a bit touchy about the whole Apocalypse/destiny thing. We all are."

 "Especially when you show up and start picking over every sucky thing that's ever happened to us," Dean added angrily. "Dad learned things the hard way. Surviving a lonely childhood, a stinking war . . . only to get fucked over by demons and angels who let it happen. That man got a bum rap around every turn. But you know what? He kept going. And in the end, he did a hell of a lot more good than he did bad."

 There was yet another awkward silence.

 "I'm sorry," Henry said finally, realizing it was his turn to break the ice. "I wish I had been there for him."

 "If wishes were fishes, we'd walk on the sea," Dawn retorted, abruptly returning in less of a huff.

 "Fishes, huh?" Dean said.

 She shrugged, grabbing a sword out of the air and twirling it around her fingers. "Hey, I didn't make it up.”

 “I’m not sure which is freakier,” Dean said, side-eying her. “The conjuring or the twirling.”

 The sword whirled with an extra flourish. “I find it reassuring. This is more mine than anything else I have, even with the ring.”

 “Ring?” Sam asked.

 “One ring to rule them all?” Dean added with a hopeful smirk.

 Dawn reversed her grip on her sword and tapped the hilt with one finger. Henry frowned. There was a silver ring with a black stone set into the hilt. “One of four,” Dawn explained. “Famine.”

 “Like the Horseman?” Sam frowned deeply “Isn’t that what caused all those Christmas shopper deaths in St. Paul?”

 “Huh?” Dean said.

 “Don’t you ever read the ninja boards?”

 “Why bother when you’ll tell me the highlights anyway?”

 Sam made an annoyed face at his brother.

 Dawn shook her head, an amused smile playing at her mouth. “Yes, that was Famine. And the most inept pair of hunters I have met so far. How they survived is a miracle beyond my understanding.”

 Dean snorted. “Roy and Walt?”

 “Roy and Walt,” Dawn agreed. “Bobby called them a first class pair of idjits.”

 “They survived a Horseman?” Sam asked incredulously.

 Dawn shrugged. “Luck and the sense to _use_ the ninja boards,” she said with a pointed look at Dean.

 “You hunted a Horseman? One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?” Henry asked in disbelief.

 “Yes,” she replied. “Famine. His ring likes you.”

 “It’s a _ring_ ,” Dean pointed out.

 “It’s the source of his power,” Dawn corrected. “I can’t use it, but I can still feel it. And even with it mostly dormant, it knows Henry’s soul hungers to return to his own time.”

 “What about the other three?” Sam asked, not revisiting that line of inquiry.

 “All have rings, but Death’s not something to worry about. Lilith may have roused them, but she’s not suicidal enough to try to bind Death. I’ve got the network on alert for the other two, and I think we might be closing in on Pestilence.”

 “Any chance Abaddon will join up with the Horsemen?” Sam looked like he was desperately hoping the answer would be “no.”

 Dawn shrugged. “She’s really not a team player, but she also tends to be unpredictable.”

 “Great. Any more good news?” Dean asked sarcastically.

 “I was going to call the Twins.”

 “Great!” His grandson actually sounded enthused.

 Henry didn’t know who “the Twins” was. Although, if the Nephilim called them as part of her “hunter-ninja network,” they were likely some sort of information operators.

 Dawn pulled out her . . . walkie-talkie. “Hey, Charlie. The gang’s all here. Whattaya got on the end of the Men of Letters?” Pressing something, she dropped it onto the table.

 A female voice emerged from the device. "Newspaper records show a tragic fire at a gentlemen's club on the night of August 12, 1958," the woman – presumably, Charlie – announced. "Of course, it was Abaddon, not a fire, but they didn't know that. There were four people reported dead - Larry Ganem, David Ackers, Ted Bowen, and Albert Magnus."

 "Albert Magnus," Henry repeated, a glimmer of hope beginning to form.

 "Friend of yours?" Dean asked.

 "Unless gramps is older than he claims, that'd be a wee bit different," a different voice – this one male – countered. The second twin. Which one was Charlie? He’d thought the first voice, but Charlie was more of a man’s name. "Albertus Magnus. German Dominican friar. Greatest alchemist of the 13th century."

 "If he had the Philosopher's Stone, he could have still been alive," the woman argued.

 "Charlie, he didn't have the Philosopher's Stone," Dawn said with exasperation. So if Charlie was the woman – odd name choice, that – who was the man?

 "You never know!"

 "Charlie!"

 "Fine," Charlie grumbled. "Hermione never had to put up with these working conditions." Henry wasn’t even going to bother asking who that was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

 "Okay, so, what is an alchemist from the middle ages doing in a fire in 1958?" Sam asked.

 "Nothing," Henry replied, pulling himself out of his internal musings. "His was the alias we'd use when going incognito. I believe someone planted his name in that article . . . so that if a Man of Letters came looking for answers, he'd know something was amiss."

 "So I suppose you want to know where the quartet is buried?" the male voice guessed.

 ***

 The Aquarian Star, the crest of the Men of Letters, representing great power and magic, was on all the tombstones except for Larry Ganem's. That headstone carried the Haitian symbol for speaking to the dead. Inside the grave was the body of a World War I vet named Captain Thomas J. Carey III. As it turned out, Tom Carey was a very happy 127-year old living in Lebanon, Kansas.

 They decided to pay him a visit.

 "Don't you think all four of us showing up might be a little overwhelming?" Sam asked.

 "He is an old guy," Dean agreed. Henry looked horrified and Dawn – why’d Kyria have to go and change her name when things were finally getting settled? – had to turn her laugh into a cough.

 "I – I need to see him," Henry said.

 "Can you two play nice together or do you want one of us to come with you?" Dean asked. He really didn’t want to go with the man – his grandfather. He was having a really hard time reconciling this guy with the guy who sort of, maybe ran out on Dad. And Sam thought Henry was great, so he didn’t really want Sam alone to bond with the guy either. Hence pairing Henry with Dawn instead. Hopefully. Dawn had some issues with the guy too. (Ha! It wasn’t just him.)

 Dawn shrugged. "I have no problem with Henry. If anything, I have experience helping people adapt to the twenty-first century."

 "You also don't have a car," Sam reminded her.

 "Just because I'm not impressed by Abby's psycho act, doesn't mean I don't take her seriously. Jake dropped me at my bike.”

 “And you proceeded to shatter every posted speed limit on your way,” Sam guessed wryly.

 She grinned. “It’s called inhuman reflexes for a reason. Although, my bike is a bit faster than most of what’s on the market.”

 "Yeah, 'cause you're missing half the parts!" Dean retorted. He might love his car more than anything else made for the road, but he could appreciate a good motorcycle. Even aside from the fact that she was the only one capable of driving that – thing – he wasn’t even sure it could be _called_ a “motorcycle” considering how much had been left out.

 "Ignore him," Sam said smoothly. "Dean's just jealous Tony Stark made you a motorcycle."

 “I am not jealous!” he protested.

 Dawn snorted. "Where else was I going to get one designed to take an outside power source? You ever ride a motorcycle, Henry?"

 ***

 "That was . . . new," Henry offered delicately as they knocked on the door.

 "I should introduce you to Steve," Dawn said with a fond smile. "You can be what-on-earth-is-this-new-fangled-contraption buddies together."

 "Steve?"

 "Rogers."

 The door opened before Henry had a chance to compose a reply.

 He shut his gaping mouth with an audible _snap_ as an elderly woman, who he was slightly horrified to recognize and quietly identified as Larry’s wife Edna, showed them in. He was even more quietly horrified to see just how  _old_ his friend had become in the intervening years.

 "Henry, is that really you?"

 "It's good to see you, Larry," he managed with some difficulty upon realizing Larry was blind. It was one thing to be _told_ his son was dead and these two grown men were his grandsons, but _seeing_ someone he had known, now aged and infirm? It made this future more real than simply a wallet-sized, portable phone and a computer the size of a book.

 "After all these years," Larry whispered in amazement. "I always hoped you'd gotten out alive somehow, but I never knew for sure and – and it's been so long." He closed his sightless eyes and drew in a ragged breath.

 "What happened to you, old friend?" Henry asked quietly.

 "Abaddon. It's a miracle I survived." He took another ragged breath.

 "I'm sorry," Henry said, feeling the inadequacy of the words.

 "Not your fault, my friend. Knowing  _you_ survived gives me more hope than I've had in a long time. Now, who is your friend?"

 "Dawn Morrow," she answered. "I'm a friend of Henry's grandsons."

 "Ah. How's your son? John, wasn't it?"

 Henry swallowed. He was still having difficulty accepting his son had lived and died in the time it took him to run though a doorway. Thankfully, Dawn didn't make him answer. "John died a few years back, I'm afraid."

 "Oh. I'm sorry."

 It was Henry's turn to close his eyes. "It's past. What matters now is I need to know why Abaddon wanted that box."

 "I don't know if it matters. The Men of Letters is gone."

 The lump in his throat was back. "Ap –” He coughed. "Apparently, my grandsons are involved in organizing hunters into something similar." Feeling pride in that felt an awful lot like abandoning his son.

 "Hunters?"

 The disdain in his voice, coupled with Dawn's pinched expression, startled a laugh out of him. "That was my reaction, too. But they're better than they were in our day."

 "If you say so."

 Henry covered a second laugh, because the skepticism in Larry's voice clearly said, "I'll believe it when I see it."

 "The box?" he reminded his old friend.

 Larry's wife walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Larry reached up to cover it with his own. "In the box is the key to every object, scroll, spell ever collected for thousands of years under one roof. It is the supernatural mother lode."

 Dawn blew out an impressed whistle. "No wonder Abaddon wants it."

 Larry chuckled darkly. "Can you imagine what she would do with that?"

 "Yeah," she said in distaste. "Yeah, I can."

 "It is the safest place on earth, warded against any evil ever created. It is impervious to any entry except, except the key." He took a pen out of his pocket and wrote something in a notebook. "Take the key to these coordinates," Larry said, holding the notebook out to Henry. "Throw it in. Shut the door forever. And walk away."

 "W-what?" Henry gaped. "I – I can't do that."

 "You must, Henry. Promise me you will do this."

 "But all that knowledge – it would – it would be lost and gone forever," Henry protested in horror.

 "And that is the price we have to pay for keeping it away from Abaddon," Larry said solemnly. "You do . . . have the key, don't you?"

 "We left it with a friend," Dawn supplied while Henry struggled to regain his equilibrium. He was supposed to figuratively burn the modern equivalent to the Library of Alexandria? How could Larry think he could so such a thing? It was anathema to everything he believed in!

 "You cannot let Abaddon get it."

 "It's as safe as I can make it," Dawn assured the elderly Man of Letters. Henry nodded in agreement before remembering it was a useless gesture as Larry could not see. The trunk of Dean's car had to be the most well-warded place Henry had ever seen.

 "Well that's unfortunate," Edna Ganem remarked. Henry looked at her in confusion just in time to see her eyes turn black.

 "Abaddon," Dawn said evenly, even as her body tensed and her hands twitched as she grabbed the arms of the chair. Larry gasped in horrified realization that the demon was  _in his living room,_ possessing his  _wife_. "It's been a long time."

 "Do I know you?" the demon asked.

 "Well, it's a poor demon that doesn't at least know  _of_  the Absent Princess," she said sweetly.

 Abaddon only had a moment to reel back to shock before Dawn leapt from her seat, a silvery sword in her right hand. The demon was only able to parry the sword with a knife before lightning sprang from the sword. Striking wildly while flinching away from the electric light, Abaddon got in a lucky hit, scraping the knife along her opponent's forearm. Twisting her injured arm away, not losing grip on the sword in her grip, Dawn brought her left hand up to counter.

 There was a sword in that hand too, and this one struck, sliding into the demon's abdomen with a wet squelch and a flare of orange light.

 Abaddon just laughed. "Ordinary angelic blades hardly tickle more than that knife dear Henry's grandson tried."

 Dawn returned her a demonic grin, yanking the sword out. It vanished from her hand, only to be replaced by one almost identical. Except Henry saw the ring on hilt of this one. "This one belonged to my father," she announced.

 Horror flashed across Abaddon's borrowed face for an instant before the new sword drove home into her chest. A massive burst of light momentarily blinded Henry.

 When he finally blinked the spots away from his vision, Dawn was kneeling on the floor beside the body of Mrs. Ganem, none of her swords in sight, right arm cradled to her chest.

 "What happened?" Larry asked desperately. "Henry? Dawn?"

 "I am sorry, Larry," Dawn said quietly. "I could not save your wife."

 " _Edna?_ " he gasped, sob caught in his throat. Henry didn't know what to say. "What happened to Abaddon?" Larry choked out. "Who  _are_ you?"

 "Abaddon's dead," Dawn said wearily, rising stiffly to her feet, arm tight to her chest. "As for who I am, well, I'm the lost daughter of the Morningstar."

 "Morning –  _Lucifer?_ You are  _Lucifer's_ daughter? I – there were – fragments of legends, rumors that the devil had a daughter but – why are you here?"

 "Because I chose Earth over Heaven or Hell," she replied simply. "And I protect what is mine." With that, she pulled out one of those small, wireless phones and placed a call. "Hey, Jake, you get to Lebanon yet? Good. I've got a dead demon and an elderly civilian who probably needs medical care."

 ***

 Law enforcement became markedly incurious about a local elderly woman stabbed to death in her own home when Dawn flashed her SHIELD badge. She left her friend Jake, who turned out to be a young, black, former Army man, also equipped with a SHIELD badge, in charge of handling the scene because she needed to get out of there "before any of the choir boys decide to poke into Abby's demise."

 "Choir boys?" Henry asked as they left to meet his grandsons.

 "Angels. I have a somewhat – turbulent – relationship with them."

 "Turbulent?"

 "They try to kill me. Repeatedly. For no reason except that I was born to the wrong father, although they aren't fond of nephilim in general. To my knowledge, there's only one other left and her lineage is significantly diluted."

 "Does she know?"

 "That Heaven considers her an abomination? Yeah. She's a waitress in California, but she knows to call if she notices any angels hanging around."

 "Ah." It seemed like the more he learned, the more complicated the future really was. "What's Jake's story?"

 "Dosed with demon blood as an infant. Like Sam and two other ninjas."

  _"Sam?!"_

 “Did you miss that part of the Cold Oak debacle? Or was it just information overload?”

 “Uh, the second?”

 She explained the nitty-gritty details of the circumstances leading to her meeting his grandsons, followed up with a revision of forming NINJAT under the secretive scrutiny of SHIELD.

 "That's why you cannot go back to 1958," she added. Henry jerked guiltily. He hadn't quite given up on the idea, although he suspected he was slowly resigning himself to it. "We're keeping Lucifer in his box with a house of cards. Too many details were arranged and accounted for for any of the would-be puppeteers to allow a fly in the ointment. One way or another, you would die before you could stop anything. Especially since Famine’s ring kinda wants you to go and his power made people give into their desires until they died. So, that’s probably a really bad idea."

 "I know – it's just – " He shook his head. "I know." John had literally gone through Hell for his sons. Henry couldn't dishonor his son's sacrifice because by thinking he could do better. "So, um, you have to run from angels often?"

 It wasn't the existence of angels that bother him – the spell he used to try to escape Abaddon had called for an angel feather, after all – but he was having a hard time adjusting his thinking to, among other things, angels as something dangerous to be avoided. Granted, angels were part of the reason his son was dead, so he didn't think that would stay a sticking point for long.

 "Prior to a couple months ago, I hadn't had a problem with angels for a few decades."

 Decades. Oh dear. Something else to get used to. Being on speaking terms with someone born before Christ.

 "What happened a couple of months ago?"

 "The Mayans were off by a few weeks – the Realms aligned, and space and gravity went a little, uh, wonky. Only in certain areas. No one on Earth noticed except some kids, scientists, and conspiracy theorists. When I got back, I was broadcasting a bit and had to dodge angelic hit-men. Nothing I hadn't done before. Same shit, different day."

 "Got back?"

 "Asgard."

 "Oh." He blinked a few times as that sank in. “Like the Norse home of the gods?”

 “Exactly right.”

 She gave a brief synopsis of the team assembled to fight aliens in New York nearly two years earlier. Other planets. _Aliens_. Thor. Loki. Gabriel the Archangel.

 “The United States landed men on the moon in July 1969,” she added as he tried not to hyperventilate.

 Oh dear.

 ***

 They met Dean and Sam at the coordinates Larry had provided. It didn't look like much. An abandoned power plant on a hill above the rather dingy doorway set into the hill at the bottom of a short flight of stairs.

 "It doesn't look like much," Dean said with a frown.

 "Camouflage?" Sam suggested. "If the Men of Letters didn't want anyone to know their repository was here, they wouldn't  _want_ it to look like much."

 Dean opened the trunk of his car to remove the box Henry had traveled so far to protect. "You should do the honors."

 "I – thank you." With no little trepidation, Henry opened the box, took out the key, and unlocked the door. Sam passed him a flashlight.

 Dawn was the last in and she let out a relaxed sigh. "Good wards. I don't think I'd be able to do better," she said just before Dean found the fuse box and the lights switched on overhead.

 "Sweet," Dean said with awe, looking around. "I think we found the bat cave."

 "We should get Bobby out here," Sam suggested.

 "So he doesn't have to call you ‘idjits’ again?" Dawn noted. "Good idea. Charlie would probably like it here, too. She always complains about the difficulty of getting proper warding – and decent research materials. Maybe Ash if he’s willing to give up the Roadhouse."

 "I have no problem with Charlie – as long as she doesn't scan a demon onto the internet," Dean warned.

 Sam laughed. "You watched that?"

 Dean snorted. "Well, so did you."

 Sam stopped laughing abruptly.

 Henry looked between them, confused.

 "It's a long story," Dawn told him with an easy grin.

 He sighed. "I guess I have time."

 "That you do," she agreed. "And while we're at it, we can figure out everything the Men of Letters knew about the Horsemen. And angels. They’re always a problem and they’re getting worse."

 

 ***


End file.
